


bittersweet

by kybcr



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-28
Updated: 2017-06-28
Packaged: 2018-11-20 02:49:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,423
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11327109
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kybcr/pseuds/kybcr
Summary: perhaps not all of them came back from the war the same.





	bittersweet

_harry._

 

It is a foreign feeling to Harry, safety.

 

He is not used to being able to rest in a warm, soft bed knowing that there is no one trying to kill him. It doesn't seem right. He still can't sleep without knowing that his wand is in close reach, or that Ron or Hermione is keeping watch outside.

 

Ginny helps. Her presence next to him is like an anchor tying him down.

 

But he still has nightmares, flashes of red and green and crying and shouting and every time he wakes up he has to go over everything that happened at the Battle of Hogwarts, scene by scene, death by death, just to make sure that Voldemort’s death was not another dream. To make sure that those headaches don't mean that he's back.

 

But Voldemort rose from the dead once. Because there were parts of his soul in other mediums. In Harry. It makes him feel tainted and dirty, to know that Voldemort had shared his body, his breath and his mind. It makes him feel sick that he still knows how to say ‘open’ in Parseltongue.

 

Harry doesn't know what to do with himself now that he doesn't have to keep moving to avoid detection. He finds himself forgetting little things like knocking on doors, or changing clothes every day, because it's been so long since he did such mundane, ordinary things.

 

And he knows that it is his fault that whenever he needs to know something or to ask advice, he turns to the windowsill, quill in hand, to find Hedwig’s empty cage, door creaking in the wind.

 

(It's beginning to rust, because he can't bring himself to look directly at it for long enough to clean it.)

 

The words he wants to write shrivel away into dust.

 

_Dear Sirius,_

 

_Dear Remus,_

 

_Dear Tonks,_

 

 _Dear_ _Fred and_ _George,_

 

One night he is woken by something that has his sure that _this is it. He's back._

 

It's a scream.

 

_***_

 

_ginny._

 

_Ginny is in a dark, hazy room. She can't see the edges or walls. It's like she's sitting in a room of clouds, but the clouds are black and looming, darkly blurred blooms. She shrinks away from them._

 

_‘Don't worry, Ginny. I'm here. I'm always here.’_

 

_She turns and he kisses her. He is here, she is safe, he will protect her._

 

_But it is not Harry that she finds waiting for her. It's Tom Riddle. His face is not the charming, handsome one that she remembers, but it is scaled and hideous, green and reptilian. His forked tongue flicks out, brushing against her cheek. She screams, but no sound comes out of her mouth._

 

Ginny sits up, gasping for breath. It takes a moment for her to believe what her eyes show her, that she is not in the Chamber of Secrets but rather in her own home, with Harry next to her.

 

He is sitting up as well. There are hollows under his eyes and his hair is a rats nest, but Ginny knows that she probably looks worse.

 

Harry’s eyes are wide. ‘What—what happened? Ginny, are you all right? I heard a scream and…’

 

She draws in a rattling breath. Ginny didn't realise that she'd screamed aloud. Her throat is indeed still sore.

 

She watches a moth wander by her window before replying. The moth’s path was meandering, unworried.

 

‘Everything is fine. Just a nightmare.’

 

She swallows. _Be strong. Do not cry._

 

But she's not eleven anymore, there are no brothers left to convince that she is just as tough as they are. She lets herself lean her head on Harry’s shoulder and feels a warm tear slide down her face.

 

A sob bursts from her throat and Ginny throws her arms around Harry. ‘Every time I close my eyes, Harry. I can't— I'm always waiting for what lies underneath my eyelids at night. It started after our second year, but they got better till the war started. And now… now I—’

 

Her breath hitches in her chest.

 

Dimly, as if from a great distance, she registers that Harry is murmuring to her. His voice is low and hoarse, like grating glass. But it is still his voice.

 

Ginny is not used to having another person to lean on. It's strange that despite having six— no, five— brothers, she was so independent. After Dumbledore’s death Harry had left, and she had been alone again. Then he came back, and she had been happy— God, she was _ecstatic._ He was here, she was here, they had a lifetime ahead of them together. But he had not come back the same boy who had left her, and she was not the same girl anymore.

 

Their jagged edges, broken and fractured, were perhaps blunted and smoothed by each other. But it was not enough. Maybe it would never be.

 

***

 

_george._

 

George was an inventor. He created anything and everything. Things that could explode, things that could create and destroy.

 

The toll of Fred’s death did not fully kick in for quite a while. For a long time he had regarded problems as being temporary and fixable, like when the other half of the Fainting Fancies couldn't be ingested because the user was unconscious. They had fixed and perfected that.

 

It took George far too long to accept that he could not fix this particular problem, that he could not bring Fred back.

 

There are no mirrors in his house, because every time he looks into one he sees Fred staring back at him, but with hollows under bloodshot eyes, red hair in matted clumps, skin gray and tired. Missing one ear.

 

He almost writes to his mum once, but he crumples up the letter and tosses it in the fire, watching the paper crackle and hiss.

 

The first time he returns to Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes he has to squeeze his eyes shut for a moment. He even briefly contemplates going back home and leaving the shop boarded up.

 

The scent of Diagon Alley’s damp smoke and the chatter of wheels on cobblestone surround him. He remembers that Fred died with a smile on his face, a joke on his lips, and George resolves to bring more smiles and more laughter into other people’s lives.

 

***

 

_draco._

 

Draco is lost after the war.

 

He fought on the right side, in the last battle. He tells himself every day that he did the right thing. But he knows that he is lying to himself. He changed sides because he was scared.

 

Because he is a coward. Like his parents. They were too scared to do the right thing. So had Draco, but he had left the Dark Lord because he was scared of what would happen if he did the _wrong_ thing.

 

It made no difference in the end. Draco stays in his home with Daphne, avoiding at all costs the outside world. He never shows his face to the neighbors, knowing that doing so will mean graffiti on his walls, his name tossed around and dirtied. The Malfoy name tainted, his father would say.

 

But his father had been a stupid coward and had taught Draco to be a stupid coward. Stupid enough and cowardly enough to join the side that had slaughtered innocent people for no more reason than that they were in the way.

 

 _It's your fault,_ the voice in his head says.

_You might have stopped those deaths._

 

_If you hadn't told Potter that purebloods were better in first year you might have become his friend. You might have picked his side._

 

_Might._

 

Draco can't even _think_ the words ‘filthy mudblood’ without being reminded of everything they stood for and how many died because of it.

_Potter saved your life twice and you turned around and stayed with the Death Eaters._

He looks at his left wrist, sleeve pulled over the faded Dark Mark. His hands are shaking.

_You chose that._

His wand is lying on the bedside table, seeming so innocent and innocuous, just sitting there.

 

(He liked it better like that now, as a simple wooden twig rather than a medium of magic.)

He tried to use that wand to kill, but no matter how many _avada kedavra_ s came out of his mouth there was no flash of green light, no one falling to the floor like a bird falling out of the sky, out of shape, out of place.

***

 

***

Perhaps the Battle of Hogwarts had been a victory, but it had been a bittersweet one.

  
  
  
  



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